As a reporter for American Banker and Payment Source, Bailey broke some big early stories, and was one of the lone voices reporting on bitcoin to the banking sector. Bitcoin has mostly been seen as a consumer application, so Bailey reporting for a trade publication is quite unique. You can find an archive of her reporting here:

Favorite Quotes from the podcast:

On Bitcoin versus private permissioned ledgers:

“I think a lot of these private permissioned blockchains, it is still yet to been if they can pull this off. Because everything is in pilot or proof of concept phases, and so the bitcoin community has an angle there to say were the only ones up and running, and we've been up and running since 2008.”

On covering early Bitcoin companies:

“And a bunch of companies that I covered that covered back in the day are no longer around, and it's not necessarily because they were bad companies, it was because they were too soon, they were before regulation, and once regulation hit, it was like 'Oh shit, what do we do now?'”

“There was a huge group also talking about the history of money, predominantly because bitcoin is a thing. Let's go back, why is bitcoin a thing now? Does that say anything about money's past, or money's future? That was the initial underlying of MoneyTripping, the road trip.”

An intense road trip - three days per state:

“As the road trip went on, it just became more and more of a vacation. Where I am just going to do whatever I want. And I think that actually turned into better work.

To financially make MoneyTripping happen, Bailey saved up some money, and did some freelance journalism on the side. She also earned $1500 in tips, mostly through Paypal, but some bitcoin tips.

She started MoneyTripping with $8,000, and in all spent about $12k, living frugally. Half of the spending was on gas. To cap off the trip, she drove back into Missouri with $300 in her account.